We have a server with a couple of hundred sites on it. We plan to move these onto Windows 2008 64 bit.

Each site will be configured in its own application pool.

To maintain compatibility with a number of 32bit COM components we'll be configuring all the application pools to run in 32bit mode.

The server will be configured with 32GB of RAM.

Whilst I realise the virtual address space of each 32bit process will still only be 4GB, will all the worker processes be spread throughout the 32GB of physical RAM? Or will they be crammed into say the first 4GB of physical memory?

1 Answer
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Each process will get a 4GB address-space (somewhat less, actually, but close enough). Scaling 32-bit applications by running multiple processes on a 64-bit platform is a perfectly viable scaling strategy. So long as you can run multiple app. pools out of process you'll get benefits.